Abroad with the Jimmies eBook

I was armed at that time with many of these visiting-cards
of introduction, and after this instance I filed them
with great care in the waste-basket. I then examined
my other letters. It is idle to describe to those
who have never depended upon such documents in foreign
countries the inadequacy of half of them. In spite
of the kindest intentions, they were really worthless.

It was only after I got to Poland and Russia, where
the hospitality springs from the heart, that my introductions
began to bear fruit satisfactory to a sensitive mind.
It is, therefore, with feelings of the liveliest appreciation
that I look back on the letter given me by Ambassador
White in Berlin to Count Leo Tolstoy. A lifetime
of diplomacy, added to the sincerest and most generous
appreciation of what an ideal hospitality should be,
have served to make this representative of the American
people perfect in details of kindness, which can only
be fully appreciated when one is far from home.
Nothing short of the completeness and yet brevity
of this letter would have served to obtain an audience
with that great author, who must needs protect himself
from the idle and curious, and the only drawback to
my first interview with Tolstoy was the fact that
I had to part company with this precious letter.
It was so kind, so generous, so appreciative, that
up to the time I relinquished it, I cured the worst
attacks of homesickness simply by reading it over,
and from the lowest depths of despair it not only
brought me back my self-respect, but so exquisitely
tickled my vanity that I was proud of my own acquaintance
with myself.

My introduction to Princess Sophy Golitzin, in Moscow,
was of such a sort that we at once received an invitation
from her to meet her choicest friends, at her house
the next day. When we arrived, we found some
thirty or forty charming Russians in a long, handsomely
furnished salon, all speaking their own language.
But upon our approach, every one began speaking English,
and so continued during our stay. Twice, however,
little groups fell into French and German at the advent
of one or two persons who spoke no English.

Russians do not show off at their best in foreign
environments. I have met them in Germany, France,
England, Italy, and America, and while their culture
is always complete, their distinguishing trait is their
hospitality, generous and free beyond any I have ever
known, which, of course, is best exploited in their
own country and among their own people.

At the Princess Golitzin’s, I was told that
the Countess Tolstoy and her daughter had been there
earlier in the afternoon, but, owing to the distance
at which they lived, they had been obliged to leave
early. They, however, left their compliments
for all of us, and asked the princess to say that
they had remained as long as they had dared, hoping
for the pleasure of meeting us.

Being only a modest American, I confess that I opened
my eyes with wonder that a personage of such renown
as the Countess Tolstoy, the wife of the greatest
living man of letters, should take the trouble to leave
so kind a message for me.